Event Calendar

The Impact of Pollution on Planetary Health: Emergence of an Underappreciated Risk Factor

Philip Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP, DIH, is Professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health and Pediatrics and Dean for Global Health in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is a pediatrician, epidemiologist, and leader in public health and preventive medicine. Dr. Landrigan’s pioneering research on the effects of lead poisoning in children contributed to the U.S. government’s decision to remove lead from gasoline and paint. His leadership of a National Academy of Sciences Committee on pesticides in children’s diets generated widespread understanding that children are uniquely vulnerable to toxic chemicals in the environment and helped to secure the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the only federal environmental law in the United States that contains explicit protections for the health of children. It led also to establishment of EPA’s Office of Children’s Health Protection. Dr. Landrigan was a leader in developing the National Children’s Study, the largest epidemiological study of children’s health and the environment ever launched in the United States. He has been centrally involved in the medical and epidemiologic studies that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He has consulted extensively to the World Health Organization. Dr. Landrigan currently chairs The Lancet-Mount Sinai Global Commission on Pollution & Health. Dr. Landrigan is a graduate of Boston Latin School, Boston College, Harvard Medical School and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He is a 41-year veteran of the US Public Health Service and the US Navy.